Alec Baldwin Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ
In this video, Alec Baldwin breaks down his most iconic characters from film and television, including roles in '30 Rock,' 'Beetlejuice,' 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' 'The Hunt for Red October,' 'Blue Jasmine' and 'Mission: Impossible.'
About the NBC sitcom ’30 Rock’ (2006-13) Baldwin says, “I had no interest really in doing a TV series, because I thought ‘I’m going to be parked there.’ I was divorced from my ex-wife, my daughter was very young, it was about 2006. I said to Lorne [Michaels] ‘I can’t do it because I need to be able to commute back and forth from LA every other weekend.”
He was hesitant to commit to the show also because the cast was so adept at comedy and he felt he was not, the series was based on Tina Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live. “After the first season we all started to get our footing like many shows. If you watch the first season of ‘Will and Grace,’ none of them sound the way they sound after season 3 and 4.”
About ’30 Rock’ ending after 7 seasons, “I kind of sensed Tina must be exhausted. She was a mom and everything so she decided to do a shorter season 7 and it was over… it was probably a good time to go.”
At least they didn’t bring up The Shadow, unquestionably one of the worst movies of any genre where Baldwin was seriously miscast. On the other hand, Glengarry Glen Ross is one of the best films ever made, Baldwin’s character is so iconic his line “Second place is a set of knives, third place is you’re fired” gets quoted often in business meetings.
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It is what it is!
“To be in this business and have tremendous integrity and only make distinguished choices is very tough.” - Alec Baldwin